All posts tagged ‘water’

When I was a kid, I remember building a homemade Slip ’n’ Slide with my friends to have some outdoor fun on a hot summer day. We’d usually cut up a number of black garbage bags and try to overlap them to create a good run. Then turn a sprinkler or two on them, and get busy.

These days, mass-produced Slip ’n’ Slide–type things are available at any big-box store for around $30. They’re big, bright, and even imaginative. Heck, you can drop a couple hundred bucks and get giant inflatable water slides that will fill up your whole yard.

What I’ve found over a few years with my kids and their friends is that the quality of construction usually makes these slides a one- or two-use product. And while I said they were imaginative, they’re usually not that big, since they’re designed for a mass market of people who won’t all have the yard space for a larger slide. So I started to wonder if there wasn’t something that could be done at home, in the DIY spirit of using garbage bags like I did as a kid, but a bit more durable and, you know, BIGGER. And what I came up with is easy to build, hugely fun to play with, durable, and simple to take apart and store for significant reuse.

This project involves building the basic concept of the slip ’n’ slide (SNS) using durable over-the-counter materials. All you need is a $30 roll of heavy plastic, ten $2 pool noodles, a $10 sprinkler hose, and a couple rolls of peel-and-stick Velcro (about $7 a roll).

So what is an SNS at its core? It’s simply a long expanse of material that gets slippery when wet. It should have some kind of guides or berms on the sides to keep sliders from slipping off while traveling down its length. And it needs a water source.

Illustration by Bradley L. Hill

To start, take your roll of heavy sheet plastic and lay it out on your yard or other assembly site. We tried some 6-mil plastic sheeting, 6 feet wide by 50 feet long for our sample slide, since it gave a nice width of sliding surface, and the length fit across our front yard. But, depending on your location, you may want a smaller or bigger (yeah!) slide. Figure out which side is the top (it’s a completely arbitrary decision since both sides are the same, but you have to pick one and stick with it), and place it facedown.

Lay the noodles around the perimeter of your plastic. You can leave a foot or so between each noodle. The standard length of a pool noodle is about 5 feet, so for our 50-foot long slide, we used eight noodles per side with about a foot of spacing, give or take, and then one noodle at either end.

Next, starting at one end, take a noodle and lay it on the plastic a few inches in from the outside edge. Pull the plastic over the noodle as if you’re going to wrap it up, and get enough overlap so about an inch of the plastic from the edge touches the plastic on the other side of the noodle toward the middle. This is where you’ll be sticking the Velcro.

Attach a 2-inch strip of the Velcro to the plastic at each end and in the middle of each noodle so that the plastic wraps over and under the noodle and is attached back to itself. Do this for all the noodles until you have a berm all the way around the perimeter of your slide.

Once you’re done, you have the underside of your slide. Flip it over, and you should have what looks a little like a very long, very narrow emergency slide from an airliner. Or a really cool waterslide.

Last thing we need is the water source. If you’re keeping it simple, just make sure you have a little slope and start running a hose at the top of the slide at the higher end (where you’ll start your slides from). Or if you have one or more lawn sprinklers, use those. For a little more money, pick up a 50-foot sprinkler hose and (if you also got the extra roll of Velcro) affix it to the side of the slide down one of the berms. Use your regular hose to feed water into it and you’ve got a perfect shower down your slide.

Important tip for a flat yard: The best placement for an SNS is on a gentle downhill slope that peters out at the end to flat, but not all of us are lucky enough to have the perfect sliding real estate. If you’re building your SNS on a flat expanse of lawn, an added feature could be of use. Get a piece of rope about 6 or 8 feet long. Tie each end to a short piece of wooden dowel or a plastic handle like the ones that come with car window squeegees or toilet plungers. Make sure you have good knots, and perhaps wrap it all up in duct tape as well. You now have a towline. Position your child to sit at the starter end of the slide, either in a crisscross applesauce position or on his or her front or back, and have someone as big or bigger pull him while running down the slide. Once the initial friction is overcome, it’s not very hard to build up a bit of speed down the slide. Just make sure to have them let go before the end of the slide.

Now just wait for a warm day, collect the neighborhood kids, and become the best house on the block! Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, with all that Velcro, this thing is really easy to disassemble and fold away for another day.

Water Splash by Flickr user steve.garner32. Used under Creative Commons license.

Back in January, to help you save time sorting through all the reviews and gift ideas, I wrote about the 5 Best Toys of All Time. (If you haven’t read it yet, go ahead. I’ll wait. The rest of this post won’t make as much sense otherwise.)

Since then, I’ve had a lot of people chime in about what should have been on the list, or what else I should add if the list got longer, and I had various reasons for narrowing it down to the five I picked.

Some of the contenders:

Bubble Wrap was actually in the running — I had even picked out a photo to use — but I ended up leaving it out. The biggest problem with Bubble Wrap (which, don’t get me wrong, is perhaps still up there in the top 10 or so) is that it’s a single-use item. Once it’s popped, it loses most of its charm.

Rock has been suggested, and is also a terrific toy, but can also do quite a bit more damage than most of the others I ended up keeping. As a parent, I have to admit that Stick and String both have safety issues, but Rock isn’t something to be taken, er, lightly.

Ball, which is related to Rock, also had quite a few fans … but it just wasn’t really in keeping with the rest of the list. You’ll notice that none of the items on the list are actually things that are packaged and sold as toys. That’s the whole point. Sure, Ball is a quintessential toy, but I was really looking for things your kids turn into toys rather than things that start off as toys. You can make a Ball out of String, but you can’t really make a String out of Ball. So I dropped it.

One item came up again and again in the comments: Tape. I have to admit, I should have thought of it. My kids love playing with tape so much that I got them their own tape dispenser (though they still take mine). It’s certainly another toy that has many uses, and comes in small (Scotch) or large (duct) versions. My kids are pretty attached to it. Still, compared to the other items on the list, tape isn’t cheap, and is generally non-recyclable.

But after pondering it for a while over the past week, I think I’ve made my decision about #6 on the list of Best Toys of All Time…

Water Splash by Flickr user steve.garner32. Used under Creative Commons license.

Back in January, to help you save time sorting through all the reviews and gift ideas, I wrote about the 5 Best Toys of All Time. (If you haven’t read it yet, go ahead. I’ll wait. The rest of this post won’t make as much sense otherwise.)

Since then, I’ve had a lot of people chime in about what should have been on the list, or what else I should add if the list got longer, and I had various reasons for narrowing it down to the five I picked.

Some of the contenders:

Bubble Wrap was actually in the running — I had even picked out a photo to use — but I ended up leaving it out. The biggest problem with Bubble Wrap (which, don’t get me wrong, is perhaps still up there in the top 10 or so) is that it’s a single-use item. Once it’s popped, it loses most of its charm.

Rock has been suggested, and is also a terrific toy, but can also do quite a bit more damage than most of the others I ended up keeping. As a parent, I have to admit that Stick and String both have safety issues, but Rock isn’t something to be taken, er, lightly.

Ball, which is related to Rock, also had quite a few fans … but it just wasn’t really in keeping with the rest of the list. You’ll notice that none of the items on the list are actually things that are packaged and sold as toys. That’s the whole point. Sure, Ball is a quintessential toy, but I was really looking for things your kids turn into toys rather than things that start off as toys. You can make a Ball out of String, but you can’t really make a String out of Ball. So I dropped it.

One item came up again and again in the comments: Tape. I have to admit, I should have thought of it. My kids love playing with tape so much that I got them their own tape dispenser (though they still take mine). It’s certainly another toy that has many uses, and comes in small (Scotch) or large (duct) versions. My kids are pretty attached to it. Still, compared to the other items on the list, tape isn’t cheap, and is generally non-recyclable.

But after pondering it for a while over the past week, I think I’ve made my decision about #6 on the list of Best Toys of All Time…

You don’t have to have a degree and a lot of experience to find ways to use our resources more efficiently.

Two years ago, at the age of 7, Mason Perez hypothesized that he was wasting a lot of water when washing his hands. By simply turning down the water pressure using the valves already installed under most sinks he was able to cut water usage up to 23 percent.

He wasn’t simply satisfied with saving water at home, though, so he took it to the local ball park. Mason and his mother convinced the manager to test his idea and after a brief trial the park was saving 20 percent on their water bill. The municipal water company noticed and now the city of Reno, Nevada is looking to implement the water saving techniques at other places throughout the city.

This would be a great experiment to try at home with your own kids. Use a stopwatch and time how long it takes to fill a quart jar. Partially close the shut-off valve below the sink and time it again. Time how long it takes to wash and rinse hands with both the high and low pressure. A few minutes experimenting might save some money on your water bill and help save the planet in the process.

Our world is full of many different types of ecosystems. We tend to be very familiar with the ones in which we live, and with the ones where we spend a great deal of time. But we’re often unfamiliar with many of the others. Since the world’s deserts are only a small part of what covers our globe, there are plenty of people who haven’t had first hand experience with them. I have, having lived for five years in the Sonoran desert of Arizona as a child, and also during frequent visits back there. I also currently live in an almost-desert, a high plateau that is just a couple of inches of rain over the amount that defines a desert. During certain times of the year, we go months at a time without rain. I’ve seen my share of dust devils, tumbleweeds, washes, cacti and desert creatures. Javelinas are regular visitors to our house. So I was a good choice to review Discover the Desert, written by our very own Kathy Ceceri. Kathy sent me a copy to review, knowing that I could read her book from a place of personal experience.

Discover the Desert: The Driest Place on Earth has a very colorful cover that really pulls you in. As you open the book, though, it’s almost as if you’ve entered the desert itself. The pages are monochrome in various shades of slightly reddish brown. That really gives an immersive experience, since most deserts aren’t quite as colorful as the well-watered areas of the globe. Deserts do have plenty of green and other colors, however. Experience Tucson in the spring and you’ll see what I mean. The colors just don’t tend to be as vibrant as in wet areas.

This book is part science, part history, part culture and part art, all combined into one really fun read. It is part of the Discover Your World series by Nomad Press that also includes Discover the Amazon, Discover the Oceans, Discover National Monuments: National Parks and Discover the Seven Wonders of the World. Also for this series, Kathy has written The Silk Road: Discover the World’s Most Famous Trade Route, which has a particularly gorgeous cover. It will be out sometime in the future. Continue Reading “Discover Discover the Desert” »

Here’s something fun for you physics geeks: my aunt in Taiwan has this bronze bowl with two handles. You add water, wet your palms, and then rub them on the handles. If you get the bowl resonating just right, then the water ripples and eventually sprays up in a shower of droplets. Googling turns up things like “Tibetan dancing water bowl” and “resonating water bowl” that you can buy online. I shot a little video of myself demonstrating how it works.